Anthony Ward - Designer

Theatre includes: The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale (Brooklyn Academy of Music and Old Vic), Glengarry Glen Ross (Apollo), Macbeth (Gielgud, Chichester, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Broadway), Dying City (Lincoln Center, New York), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (London Palladium and Broadway), Gypsy (Broadway), Oliver! (London Palladium), Oklahoma! (Lyceum and Broadway), The Night of the Iguana (Lyric) and Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! (Sadler’s Wells and tour). National Theatre: Napoli Milionaria, Sweet Bird of Youth, John Gabriel Borkman, The Way of the World, La Grande Magia, Othello, The Invention of Love, Remember This, Oklahoma! The Royal Hunt of the Sun and My Fair Lady (and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane). Royal Shakespeare Company: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, The Tempest, Artists and Admirers, The Winter’s Tale, The Alchemist, The Virtuoso, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Secret Garden. Donmar Warehouse: Small Change, Mary Stuart (Apollo), Assassins, Nine, To the Green Fields Beyond, Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Royal Court: Rhinoceros and The Arsonist. Almeida: The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, The Rehearsal, A Hard Heart, Dona Rosita, The Novice and Marianne Dreams. Anthony has worked extensively in opera and ballet. Awards include: 2003 OBIE for Uncle Vanya, 1996 Olivier for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, La Grande Magia and The Way of the World Costume Designs and 1999 Olivier for Oklahoma! Set Design.

"The major design feature of this Oliver! is the cobbled floor I’ve given it. Cobbles are a very effective shorthand to say this is an earlier, urban landscape. It immediately creates a Dickensian feel to the stage. Drury Lane has an incredible depth, like no other theatre I’ve worked in. This has allowed us to create a sense of epic architecture, a real Victorian landscape. Working in this amazing theatre has given the team a chance to reinvent the show. One reason for the need of a sense of space, of size, of the sheer power of the city, is that Oliver! is seen through the boy’s eyes: we have to create a sense both of the scale of London and the darkness of the life that many people lived."